Increasingly, we are seeing regulation and policies being driven by a coalition of two groups with differing goals: people with I will say, bad intentions to crack down on speech and communication between at risk groups, especially non-white and queer people. Who are, weirdly, teaming up with well meaning people who are upset at big tech for allowing terrible things to happen especially as engagement-oriented feeds have lead to radicalization of hate and other such things. And both of them are saying, "let's punish big tech!" Which like, great, I'm all for punishing big tech. Except...
Except, for the most part, they aren't doing it! Things like repealing Section 230 in the US won't punish big tech much at all, it'll make it so that big players dominate the ecosystem more because they are the only ones that can comply with it (a "regulatory moat") and in the process, they'll tamp down on content from more diverse groups (it's no coincidence a lot of these bills are being pushed for by fundamentalist anti-queer lobbying orgs.) And unfortunately, it may get a lot harder for smaller, community oriented and self-hosting groups to exist.
(Notably, even Matrix is recognizing this in their own blogpost about Discord stuff!) https://matrix.org/blog/2026/02/welcome-discord/
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